Combat Kelly (I)

First Appearance: Combat Kelly #1 (November 1951).
Appearances: Battle #60, 62, Combat Kelly #1-44.
Years Active: 1941-1954.

"Snarling, sweating, swearing" Combat Kelly, with his best bud Cookie Novak and the "battle-weary infantry" must have been responsible for wiping out at least a third of the Communist forces all by themselves, so high was the body count.

Um...let me start again.

Combat Kelly, like Combat Casey and many of the other Atlas war heroes, was a warfront soldier who killed lots of Commies and didn't show much in the way of a distinctive personality. Kelly serves under Major Thorn, who dislikes Kelly and calls him a "gold-bricking, girl-crazy, chow-gulping, battle-batty G.I." among other such endearments. Kelly fought in World War Two (in which Thorn was a Captain) as well as Korea, and is (naturally) a good fighter, as well as skilled at sneaking behind enemy lines, dressing in the enemy's uniforms, and killing the enemy (of course).

Notes: While most of the stories I've read involving Combat Kelly are serious, straight-ahead war stories, a certain number of them play the character and his adventures for humor, including one that forces him to dress up in woman's clothing. Also--and this is hardly singular to Combat Kelly, and is an old complaint, but it bears repeating--while he calls his Asian enemies by racial epithets, his German enemies are described only as "Nazis." One Combat Kelly story portrayed an "Agent K," a German woman working for the Allies who helps destroy a secret German organisation of SS men; no such courtesy was ever shown to a Japanese or North Korean figure.